You are an airheaded flibbertyjibbet. Swooping in here like that, desecrating the sacred MOAB, polluting her delicate thread with a bunch of mindless numbers!! There's no craFT, NO HUMOR, NO ART, NO BS, NO style, girl!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? To bring that inane infection of thoughtless, drooling number-chasing into these hallowed halls of creativity and fellowship? Fie!! Fie! Go to, and get thee to a nunnery.

It could be worse. It could be FT. He has history of it, after all. Not seen him about much recently.

It's not as if mere numbers are important on MOAB, anyway. They're just a way of keeping track of how long we've been aimlessly wandering, rhyming, kippling, digressing, HTMLing, spawning imitaitions and random fads and and a thousand other things that are harder to name.

Now behave yourself.

BTW, Thanks to my forth black coffee*, I am feeling alot calmer about HTML. *This is out of neccesssity, as I have run out of milk, and was not going to get any until I had filled out some more job applications.

Oooooooo MMario you can pinchme anytime! :-D How do you DO that? Would you consider tutoring???

(when I try, the spacing comes out all bleccchh! I even copied your llama from the 3 Stooges thread onto Wordperfect last night to see if that might unveil your secret(s) - but it came out with NO spacing at all. AARRRGHHH I just gotta figure it out ....)

Poachers who descend on the MOAB just to score high numbers became problematic from about 5000 on. We aren't fooled when they linger for a while attempting to look innocent of their poaching. Hiding in plain sight doesn't work. This is not an invitation to stay. Poachers should park their carcasses elsewhere.

Thinking Ritualizes The thinker ritualize has repetitive thoughts or images to counteract their anxiety provoking thoughts or images, the obsession. The patterns of the thinker ritualizer is closely related to the repeaters, except the thoughts are repetitious ritualistic instead of behaviors. Praying repeating specific words or phrases, and counting are the most common rituals of the ritualizer. For example, Stuart, a thinker ritualizer associated a number to bad luck and a number to good luck. When a thought with the numbers that Stuart associated with good or bad luck would enter his mind he would repeat the number six or several times to stop bad luck or good lock. Thinking ritualizer will try to remember events in detail and repeat a mental list to ensure safety. For example, a sixty ? seven year old man spent hours tested his memory every day by trying to remember unimportant events in order to prevent Alzheimer's disease (Foa & Wilson, pg 100).

Affecting poses and personas is a commonplace activity among regular MOABites. Meanspirited and self-centered postings do not belong here. MOM doesn't like them.

Naw. Read wimmin drink tea. Not in a sissy tea bag, mind you, but a spoonful of loose tea in the pot.

I don't eat french fries often, but when I do, no ketchup.

You can keep your chilly outhouse. Real women have the foritude to use an outhouse when it's 100+ degrees out. (Think about it for a minute. . .visualize the whafting aroma. . .cooking in the noonday sun. . .)

REAL men use poison ivy leaves -- there was a REAL man in my Boy Scout Troop. One. Once. I haven't met a REAL man since. (We also had a guy who managed to get poison ivy on his, well, his male appendage. Both of these incidents were cause for great, ribald, humor of the 6th grade variety.)

Well, instead of going back to work this afternoon I took my wife to Urgent Care.

I left work, picked up lunch for the two of us, and brought it home. The guy who does the sprinklers came round (we've been having problems) and in the course of discussing things, she walked across two concrete pads. She caught her foot and fell.

Her nose was bleeding, her lips were bleeding, and she couldn't feel her fingers on the right hand. I called 911.

Turns out that there was nothing broken (except an old crown in her mouth). Her right hand was xrayed, and it's okay -- soft tissue trauma, and we've got ice on it. Her glasses were scraped on the concrete, which did the lenses no good, but the optical shop is going to take care of that.

Right now, she's shaken and holding icepacks in her right hand to her lip.

She looks like I beat her, but as she said, if I had I wouldn't have been able to drive her to the Urgent Care center since corpses can't driver, even in Idaho.

She's also saying how lucky she was. No fractures, and people there to take call for help.

Sorry to hear about that, Rap! Now give that kindhearted woman (she must be, considering the kind of BS you manage to contribute on this thread, to say nothing of the hazard of all of those guns and swords in her household!) something to chuckle about and follow the link I posted at 4:35.

When it's bed time, find a hot water bottle and fill it with ice and wrap it in a hand towel, to have handy for any aching appendages.

Well, she survived thyroid cancer at 17 and a whole bunch of other stuff (including me). She's tough, she is.

Her right hand is now swollen, stiff, green, and black -- but not broken. Her upper lip is a fright. Her knees are stiff (but not broken). Her glasses are in the shop. I got the blood out of her shirt and washed the driveway ("I see I left a stain," she said). Now it's Rest Ice Compression Elevation time -- and ibuprofen.

My nephew, John, starts West for a visit tomorrow. Boy, is HE gonna get a surprise when he sees his Aunt!

I know it's unkind to chuckle, but I see that she has retained her sense of humor. Don't want to leave a stain on the driveway. :)

Sprains can be more trouble than breaks, and it sounds like she has a doozy in that hand. Since close work on the quilts is out for the time being, find something on a large scale that can be entertaining. Perhaps taking up some of Debussy's piano music for the left hand?

Nine thousand and twenty-seven post ago, our ffounder brought forth on this forum, a new Thread, conceived in bull and dedicated tot he proposition that all other threads were created equal except this one.

Now we are engaged in a great civil lull, testing whether that thread -- or ANY thread, and so dedicated-- can long endure. We are met on the last post so far to that thread. We have come to dedicate a portion of that thread, as a final resting place for more of the bull from they who here gave their brains and hearts to seeing that thread survive. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this thread. The brave writers, wise and otherwise, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we do here, but it can never forget what they have said here, I suppose. It is for us the BSing, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who wrote here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored posts we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these BSers shall not have written in vain -- that this thread, under Max, shall have a new birth of better bull-- and that BS of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Cat.

MOAB Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of forum events, it becomes necessary for one thread to dissolve the HTML bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the web, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of posters requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all threads are created equal, that they are endowed by their original Poster with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are continued growth, Liberty to drift and the pursuit of Happiness for all readers. --That to secure these rights, Moderators are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the MAX, --That whenever any Form of editing becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the MAX to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new moderation, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its clones in such form, as to MAX shall seem most likely to effect Thread Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that procedures long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that posters are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the arguments to which they are accustomed.

Have you been inhaling a little too close to your wife's bottle of painkillers?

A quick roll across the grass will take care of those ants. (It's what we do down here when confronted with lots of fire ants). Declaring yourself independent of those little buggers would be a good thing to do. Just because you're in Idaho doesn't mean they won't reach you. Just wait. . .

Well, shoot. I got up early and dug up my water cutoff and re-positioned the concrete box so I can now turn it on and off (the ball valve handle wouldn't rotate far enough to turn off the water). But I can't get the old spigots on the house to cooperate. Soaking them with vinegar doesn't even loosen the crusty stuff holding them on. I need Gluon here to zap those old stuck fittings so I can replace the washers. I don't want to start replacing faucets--that involves holes in walls, from what I can tell. Arrrrggh! (Plumbers cost SO MUCH--but I may have to bite this bullet).

How's Mrs. D. feeling today, Rap? Is the swelling down yet? And I imagine that hand is now purple, yellow, green, blue, all the colors of the rainbow?

Yeah, but I don't want to overdo it and break the pipe behind the spigot. I think I need TWO wrenches, one to stablilize the back and one to try the faucet again. For now I have the water back on and my faucets still work (even if they're drippy) after having been monkeyed with. Sometimes that in itself is a blessing!

It's supposed to hit 102 today. I'm out of the yard plumbing business until early in the morning again.

I cut the grass. About 2/3rds of the way through the cable for the self-propelled control snapped. I had to push the thing. The grass was over a foot long, and wet on the bottom. I am stiff, sore, and still have to take care of Pat.

She is going to an orthopod and the dentist on Monday whether she likes it or not.

Tomorrow nephew John arrives. He is carrying, I understand, my electric train (my first Christmas present!), my old epees (French grips), and various other things from the family Back East. Right now he's in Sidney, Nebraska -- Cabela's is there (www.cabelas.com). You'd never guess that he was a hunter and fisherman....

Oh, come now. You can't say that you don't know who I mean? Who is the most fun guy around? Who is Mr Congeniality incarnate? Who does goofy TV ads when business is slow (or even when it isn't)? Who rates big with alien girls on Arcturus 5? Who, I ask you?